The Liverpool gaffer didn’t pull one of his ‘I’m only here to talk about football’ moments but he comes pretty close with a ‘don’t talk to me about players, don’t blame me for Barry, talk to Parry and the owners.’ He stops short of saying ‘blame the bosses’ but he doesn’t need to say it, does he?
He does confirm (inadvertently or not) that Arsenal are/were after Alonso – although he’s cup tied in Europe after his appearance in Liverpool’s draw with Standard Liege.
Rafa:
“I will try to be very clear over the (Barry) situation. Everyone has been talking and it seems that the blame is put on me.
I get blamed for everything, for global warming to high petrol prices.
But in this case I want to be very clear. Since I talked to Martin O’Neill about the situation in April, I have not talked to anyone at Aston Villa.
All the talks have been between our chief executive Rick Parry, the owner and the chief executive of Aston Villa. And those talks have all been pretty good.
So if anyone wants to talk about Barry in the future they must talk with the owner, Rick Parry or the chief executive of Aston Villa. And as I have said, those talks I understand have been good.
I was not involved in the talks about Barry, I was not involved in the talks about (Xabi) Alonso and Arsenal. If you want to talk about these players you must talk to the chief executive of our club who was handling the discussions.
If you want to talk about players, then you talk to Rick Parry. If you want to talk about football, then you talk with me.”
Don’t see why this has to be spelt out though – Villa are within their rights to price Barry the way they have (who is, despite popular misconceptions, not ahead of Hargreaves in the England stakes) and if Liverpool want to win the league they need to start backing their manager as much as possible – flawed or not, he’s been forced to scrape the barrel at times (although he’s got a few really good deals since he’s come in) and Barry would have gone a long way towards ‘completing’ this Pool side.
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